Picture of the day

Ganderite said:
...The Lank was a real warhorse. But it did not have deicing. It boggles the mind to think kids with low hours were flying these things at full gross, at night, in sh***y weather.
Click to expand...

Amen to that. No armour, small guns, pitch damn black out, the astute lads in the Nachtjager squadrons up and about looking to kill you, and if the plane is shot down and you somehow manage to get out, you land in a place you've just bombed the hell out of amidst a very agitated populace.

If one day you make the mistake of realizing you're human and have a limited capacity for terror and decide you just can't absorb this much stress anymore, you're declared LMF ("lack of moral fiber") and sent somewhere with the other "pathetic non-men".

IIRC, Commonwealth bomber crews had the highest loss rate of any service in the war except the luckless bastards in the German U-Boats. They were brave, brave boys. I know for a fact that, no matter how much I love those old planes, there is no way in hell I could have done what they did.

I stand in awe of the bomber lads.
 
scott585 said:
bomb bay of a lanc, i got to see one fly a few years back here
note how long it is and that its carrying 14x 1000lb bombs, the americans loaded up their planes with big 50 cals and armour, but put tiny bomb bays in them, a b17 could carry about 1/3 the bomb weight with 400 mile shorter range
Click to expand...

Living near Hamilton Ont. does have its perks...check that, I mean perk! It's the Lancaster in Hamilton War Plane Museum. It is one 1 of 2 that are still operational, the other one being in Britain. It is a truly amazing beast to gawk at at rest, but on the rare occasion 2-3 times a year when they take it out to "stretch its wings" it is a thing of beauty. Nothing sounds like freedom more than the sound of those 4 Merlin's droning overhead at 3000 ft IMHO. I try, but it is hard for me to fathom the sight and sound of 100's of them on a bombing run over occupied Europe circa 1943. What sounds of freedom to one, must have been the sound of the 4 horsemen coming over the horizon at a full gallop to those on the receiving end. 14x 1000 = 14,000 lbs of high explosive and or incendiaries,multiplied by even 100 Lancaster's = 1,400,000 lbs of ordinance...glad they were ours!
 
Any time I am in an old bomber I cannot help but look at the thin skin around the crew and think of the gun camera footage of multiple machine guns/cannon blasting holes in the bomber. It defines "brave". Those kids knew, each time, what there were about to face and knew the odds were not good.
 
This one isn't quite ready to go; they are still waiting for the Flashbulb.

Several ships in any formation would have cameras in them, generally K-18 Sackmans which took 9-1/2-inch roll film and produced an 8 x 10-inch negative, frame after frame.

Cassettes for the cameras would be loaded by Photo Section, a given number of frames, then a single frame of Dufaycolour film would be taped in, then the remainder of the load for that cassette. The cassette was attached to the Camera, light shields removed and then the film advanced so the first frame was ready to shoot. If the plane did not have a proper Photographer aboard, the Camera would be plugged into the Bomb Distributor, which released the bombs at proper intervals to give the coverage from any altitude that they wanted: faster for closer together, slower for farther apart at any given speed..... which was a part of the programming of the Bomb Distributor.

The Flashbulb was a bomb casing containing an igniter, a barometric or Time fuse and a couple of hundred pounds of Magnesium powder and small chunks. The Flashbulb was slung in the Bomb Bay of the aircraft, shackled in and attached to its Tether.

On the bomb run, the Pilot handed over control to the Bombardier, whose job was to trip the START button on the Bomb Distributor. That released the first bomb..... and others followed as the Distributor released them in order to make the pattern and bomb density which had been decided upon. When it came time for the Flashbulb to be released, it yanked on its Tether as it fell free of the Bomb Shackles and that started the Camera. The Camera then took pictures on Black-and-White film (generally Kodak Double-X Panchromatic) until it had gone through its load.

At some point, accurately determined, the Flashbulb would erupt with several hundred million candlepower of light, lighting up the ground beneath the airplane perfectly and enabling excellent night shots to be produced. The single frame of very expensive Dufaycolour would record what was burning in the Target Zone; analysis of this frame by Colour Analyser and Spectrometer would tell the analysts WHAT was burning and WHERE, enabling a relatively-complete analysis of a given strike to be made within hours of the aircraft landing at home.

My Dad was an Aircraft Instrument Maker and Aircraft Factory Inspector during the latter part of War Two. Prior to that, he had been on Active Service with 133 FS, RCAF and had worked at Number 2 Bombing and Gunnery School at Dafoe, Saskatchewan. About 4 or 5 years ago, going through some of Dad's papers, I found a brand-new Parts Book for a Canadian GE Bomb Distributor. Investigation of some of his instrument data showed me how the thing worked.

For information on the Photo Section and Active Service in the war zone, I have relied on information from RCAF Sgt. Lawrence Stuckey, who was the single most gifted Photographer I have ever known as well as an honest-to-God Hero. Part of his job on PR missions was to hang out of the Bomb Bay while strapped into in a seat, aiming the Sackman as the Bombs fell PAST him on their way to Germany. He made it right through to the end of the War in Photo Section although when I knew him, 25 years later, his hands were still shaking.

What that War did to humans on both sides was obscene.
 
Wow. Thanks for that detailed information Smellie. I had never heard any of that before!

smellie said:
This one isn't quite ready to go; they are still waiting for the Flashbulb.

Several ships in any formation would have cameras in them, generally K-18 Sackmans which took 9-1/2-inch roll film and produced an 8 x 10-inch negative, frame after frame.

Cassettes for the cameras would be loaded by Photo Section, a given number of frames, then a single frame of Dufaycolour film would be taped in, then the remainder of the load for that cassette. The cassette was attached to the Camera, light shields removed and then the film advanced so the first frame was ready to shoot. If the plane did not have a proper Photographer aboard, the Camera would be plugged into the Bomb Distributor, which released the bombs at proper intervals to give the coverage from any altitude that they wanted: faster for closer together, slower for farther apart at any given speed..... which was a part of the programming of the Bomb Distributor.

The Flashbulb was a bomb casing containing an igniter, a barometric or Time fuse and a couple of hundred pounds of Magnesium powder and small chunks. The Flashbulb was slung in the Bomb Bay of the aircraft, shackled in and attached to its Tether.

On the bomb run, the Pilot handed over control to the Bombardier, whose job was to trip the START button on the Bomb Distributor. That released the first bomb..... and others followed as the Distributor released them in order to make the pattern and bomb density which had been decided upon. When it came time for the Flashbulb to be released, it yanked on its Tether as it fell free of the Bomb Shackles and that started the Camera. The Camera then took pictures on Black-and-White film (generally Kodak Double-X Panchromatic) until it had gone through its load.

At some point, accurately determined, the Flashbulb would erupt with several hundred million candlepower of light, lighting up the ground beneath the airplane perfectly and enabling excellent night shots to be produced. The single frame of very expensive Dufaycolour would record what was burning in the Target Zone; analysis of this frame by Colour Analyser and Spectrometer would tell the analysts WHAT was burning and WHERE, enabling a relatively-complete analysis of a given strike to be made within hours of the aircraft landing at home.

My Dad was an Aircraft Instrument Maker and Aircraft Factory Inspector during the latter part of War Two. Prior to that, he had been on Active Service with 133 FS, RCAF and had worked at Number 2 Bombing and Gunnery School at Dafoe, Saskatchewan. About 4 or 5 years ago, going through some of Dad's papers, I found a brand-new Parts Book for a Canadian GE Bomb Distributor. Investigation of some of his instrument data showed me how the thing worked.

For information on the Photo Section and Active Service in the war zone, I have relied on information from RCAF Sgt. Lawrence Stuckey, who was the single most gifted Photographer I have ever known as well as an honest-to-God Hero. Part of his job on PR missions was to hang out of the Bomb Bay while strapped into in a seat, aiming the Sackman as the Bombs fell PAST him on their way to Germany. He made it right through to the end of the War in Photo Section although when I knew him, 25 years later, his hands were still shaking.

What that War did to humans on both sides was obscene.
Click to expand...
 
Smellie - you are a national treasure. I am an ex-armaments guy, which included the photo section, and did not know what you just explained. i knew they took flash pictures for target analyses, but did not know how it was done.
 
Canadian sniper during the Italian Campaign.
470BA729-C78E-4AC3-9D5B-63F2335E8518-5288-000004CCA67F5EEB.jpg
 
Ganderite said:
"the americans loaded up their planes with big 50 cals and armour, but put tiny bomb bays in them, a b17 could carry about 1/3 the bomb weight"

I think the Mosquito carried about the same bomb load as a B17.

The Lank was a real warhorse. But it did not have deicing. It boggles the mind to think kids with low hours were flying these things at full gross, at night, in :bigHug::bigHug::bigHug::bigHug:ty weather.
Click to expand...

Quite true on the Mossy. It was probably the best bomber the allies had in WW2. I have read that the only reason it was not used more in htis role was due to narrow thinking that allowed that only big assed planes were bombers
 
Round cocking-piece on a very early Number 4 (T) might not even be a Number 4; it COULD be an SMLE Mark VI, many of which were dragged out of storage and converted to (T) configuration n the desperate early stages of the War.

Later, some of the 1931 Trials Number 4s, the first rifles actually to be NAMED Number 4, went through the process.

BOTH of these rifles had the round cocking-piece, as did early production Number 4 Rifles.

The round cocking-piece of the Number 4 was superceded in manufacture by the flat-sided model with grasping grooves for precisely the reason that the round cocking-piece of the SMLE had disappeared during the Great War: making the flat-sided model was faster, cheaper and less wasteful of materials.

When things got REALLY desperate, there were slab-sided cocking-pieces WITHOUT finger grooves. These were made only for a short time and discarded as plain dangerous. As many as possible were changed-out during the War and an effort was put into making certain that none existed on rifles which were being surplussed. A few, however, did manage to get out.
 
Notice that the sniper has taken out the back sight so that he can remove the bolt without taking the scope off. Once they were zeroed they didn't like to remove the scope and if you want to clean with a rod from the breech you need to take the bolt out. You sometimes see dents around the firing pin hole where snipers would clean with a rod from the muzzle;that was the other option.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom